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Recipes: Minestra
No. 36. Minestra alla Casalinga and Turnips Ingredients: Rice, turnips, butter, gravy, tomatoes.
Cut three or four young turnips into slices and put them on a dish, strew a little Ingredients: Rice, butter, salt over them, cover them stock, vegetables. with another dish, and let them stand for about two hours until the water has run out of them. Then drain the slices, put them in a frying - pan and fry them slightly in butter. Add some good gravy and mashed - up tomatoes, and after having cooked this for a few minutes pour it into good boiling stock. Add three ounces of well-washed rice, and boil for half-an-hour.
Minestra loses its flavour if it is boiled too long. In Lombardy, however, rice, macaroni, &c., are rarely boiled enough for English tastes.
No. 38. Minestra alla Capucina Ingredients: Rice, anchovies, butter, stock, and onions.
Scale an anchovy, pound it, and fry it in butter together with a small onion cut across, and four ounces of boiled rice. Add a little salt, and when the rice is a golden brown, take out the onion and gradually add some good stock until the dish is of the consistency of rice pudding.
No. 39. Minestra of Semolina Ingredients: Stock, semolina, Parmesan.
Put as much stock as you require into a saucepan, and when it begins to boil add semolina very gradually, and stir to keep it from getting lumpy. Cook it until the semolina is soft, and serve with grated Parmesan handed separately. To one quart of soup use three ounces of semolina.
No. 40. Minestrone alla Milanese Ingredients: Rice or macaroni, ham, bacon, stock, all sorts of vegetables.
Minestrone is a favourite dish in Lombardy when vegetables are plentiful. Boil all sorts of vegetables in stock, and add bits of bacon, ham, onions braized in butter, chopped parsley, a clove of garlic with two cuts, and rice or macaroni. Put in those vegetables first which require most cooking, and do not make the broth too thin.
Leave the garlic in for a quarter of an hour only.
IIO No. 41. Minestra of Rice and Cabbage Ingredients: Rice, cabbage, stock, ham, tomato sauce.
Cut off the stalk and all the hard outside leaves of a cabbage, wash it and cut it up, but not too small, then drain and cook it in good stock and add two ounces of boiled rice. This minestra is improved by adding a little chopped ham and a few spoonsful of tomato sauce.
No. 42. Minestra of Rice and Celery Ingredients: Celery, rice, stock.
Cut up a head of celery and remove all the green parts, then boil it in good stock and add two ounces of rice, and boil till it is well cooked.
FISH No. 43. Anguilla alla Milanese (Eels) Ingredients: Eels, butter, flour, stock, bay leaves, salt, pepper, Chablis, a macedoine of vegetables.
Cut up a big eel and fry it in two ounces of butter, and when it is a good colour add a tablespoonful of flour, about half a pint of stock, a glass of Chablis, a bay leaf, pepper, and salt, and boil till it is well cooked. In the meantime boil separately all sorts of vegetables, such as carrots, cauliflower, celery, beans, tomatoes, &c. Take out the pieces of eel, but keep them hot, whilst you pass the liquor which forms the sauce through a sieve and add the vegetables to this. Let them boil a little longer and arrange them in a dish; place the pieces of eel on them and cover with the sauce. It is most important that the eels should be served very hot.
Any sort of fish will do as well for this dish.
No. 44. Filletti di Pesce alla Villeroy (Fillets of Fish) Ingredients: Fish, flour, butter, Villeroy.
Any sort of fish will do, turbot, sole, trout, &c. Cut it into fillets, flour them over and cook them in butter in a covered stewpan; then make a Villeroy (No. 18), dip the fillets into it and fry them in clarified butter.
No. 45. Astachi all' Italiana (Lobster) Ingredients: Lobsters, Veluté sauce, Marsala, butter, forcemeat of fish, olives, anchovy butter, button mushrooms, truffles, lemon, crayfish, Italian sauce. Two boiled lobsters are necessary. Cut all the flesh of one of the lobsters into fillets and put them into a saucepan with half a cup of Veluté sauce (No. 2) and half a glass of Marsala, and boil for a few minutes. Put a croûton of fried bread on an oval dish and cover it with a forcemeat of fish, and on this place the whole lobster, cover it with buttered paper, and put it in a moderate oven just long enough to cook the forcemeat. Then make some quenelles of anchovy butter, olives, and button mushrooms, mix them with Italian sauce (No. 6), and garnish the dish with them, and round the croûton arrange the fillets of lobster with a garnish of slices of truffle.
Add a dessert-spoonful of crayfish butter and a good squeeze of lemon juice to the sauce, and serve.
No. 46. Baccalà alla Giardiniera (Cod) Ingredients: Cod or hake, carrots, turnips, butter, herbs.
Boil a piece of cod or hake and break it up into flakes, then cut up two carrots and a turnip; boil them gently, and when they are half boiled drain and put them into a stewpan with an ounce of a fireproof dish with two butter, half a teacup of boiling water, salt, and herbs. When they are well cooked add the fish and serve. Fillets of lemon soles may also be cooked this way.